♪ ♪ ANNOUNCER: Second Story Books, celebrating 50 years of dedicated book selling.

WENDELL: "Artworks" is made possible in part by the Citizens of Baltimore County and by the Ruth R. Marder Arts Endowment Fund, The Robert E. Meyerhoff and Rheda Becker Endowment for the Arts, The E.T.

and Robert B. Rocklin Fund, The Henry and Ruth Blaustein Rosenberg Foundation Arts Endowment in memory of Ruth Marder.

PETER GUIDETTI: Architecture is the art of building something well.

Architecture has always been the paramount science of putting together design, art, construction.

You're, you're shaping the way people live.

So to me it's, it's just a beautiful balance of art and science, poetry, right?

It, the architecture's literally frozen poetry on a piece of paper.

Several ways you go about it.

You go about it by studying a lot of precedent, a lot of architecture that's been done in the past.

That's what I based my whole career on, is studying these geniuses of the past, right?

So I look at the English architect, Edwin Luytens, who's a hero of mine.

I look at the American practice of McKim, Mead & White, who was a turn-of-the-century architect that produced so many beautiful buildings.

So I'm constantly looking backwards to then go forwards.

Present day, Robert A.M.

Stern is one of my heroes as far as architecture goes.

And then it's really just about that art and intuition.

What moves you, what drives you, what you think will be appropriate for the project of your client's choice, of knowing that if something's tall, maybe I need to draw something that's a little lower to balance that out.

And then so that there's a sense of rhythm and there's a sense, it's almost like music.

You're composing something in a sense on paper before it gets to be built.

So it's that's what's really beautiful about architecture.

♪ ♪ CATHY PURPLE CHERRY: Architecture is the built environment, right?

So it's any, any kind of building that basically supports source work, accomplishes an interior environment to help people do whatever it is that they're doing.

Whether it's a manufacturing building, whether it's a home, whether it's an office building, whether it's an airport, obviously, it's all about the built environment.

Anything that is structurally constructed that, that accomplishes housing a cause.

It's from whatever is the defined program that is supposed to be, uh, met through the structure.

So it's first the program, and then second it's the site.

And so those two things are the starting point for any project.

The very things that then influence what you do are going to be within the site itself.

The way that the sun moves, the way that the wind blows, the way that you visually see both close and far.

So each site is different being, it can be an urban setting, very tight.

Um, obviously, it can have a spectacular view with nothing else around it, which is a completely different site.

And then you have to begin to learn the nuances of what your clients in architecture are seeking.

What problems can you solve?

My name is Catherine Purple Cherry.

I go by Cathy Cherry.

Purple was my maiden name.

And I married Mike Cherry 44 years ago, so thus Cathy Purple Cherry came from the blend of that marriage.

I live in outside of Annapolis in the immediate area of Annapolis, Washington, D.C., and we also have a home down in Charlottesville.

I am the principal of Purple Cherry Architects, which is an architect interior design firm.

We have three offices.

Our primary is located in Annapolis, Maryland.

We have a second office in Charlottesville and a third in SoHo, New York.

I think in general, being 66 years old, I, I think that it's important that everybody realize that you get to a point in age where you actually can look back.

So my mother was a performing artist and a physical fine art artist.

And so I think that she raised us, always doing all kinds of fine art.

So I, I went as early as kindergarten with my little metal box to my painting classes after school that were in the basement of the shopping center on our way home.

And so we did constant exposure to arts and crafts, to illustrations.

My mother always bought me because she saw the artistic side in me.

She always bought me these beautiful illustration books that I still have to this day.

But I was, you know, 12 and 14 when she was giving me those kind of things.

My father was an aeronautical engineer, and I think that's an explanation of I would not have been able to have explained my father's impact on me until I got to be in my 50s because my father was working a lot and not home a lot.

And so I didn't realize the strength of the other side of my brain that does all of the mathematics and the three-dimensional thinking and the finite detail.

And that clearly, in many ways, comes from my father's brain side.

So I happen to have both sides of those.

I am the sixth child of eight children.

While I was young, two of our family members had passed away, the young ones through accidents and illness.

There's no question that I was the one that if you looked at sideways, I would run off in tears, right?

You couldn't, you didn't know how to deal with me because I was hypersensitive.

So I think that I was born with a, a really deep emotional intelligence or whatever that was that wired me to be super sensitive to anything.

People's body language, what they said.

But now you need to compound that with trauma.

So the trauma to me, I think, is a skill.

Hopefully, everybody learns that trauma is incredibly difficult to go through, but it is, in fact, its own gift.

And in a variety of multiple traumas within my lifetime.

Um, it is absolutely what has formed me to probably be truly more and more patient, more and more empathetic, et cetera.

We are standing at a private custom home that our firm designed.

I think the fantastic thing about this home that is true of these clients is that the, the gentleman of the house actually came out of the development world.

So he had a lot of exposure to construction and construction techniques.

He also is very savvy in design, loves art and unique elements.

So as we go through this home, you're gonna see some things that you probably will never see any place else.

We're gonna enter first into what is the great room.

Obviously, it consists of a double island kitchen, a dining space, and the casual family room.

There are other seating rooms throughout the house.

A few things to take note of is the client specifically loved the idea of this light fixture that was flowing with the water and flowing with the breeze, which makes it shape the way that it shapes.

A thing that was important to them within the kitchen itself is the cabinetry along the top line always be always being lit so that they could display elements that they loved.

You will take note that the millwork comes through these three rooms very aligned.

So one room is the coffers with the beadboard.

The next room is the coffers with the drywall.

And the third room is the two beams that obviously penetrate at the fireplace.

What's important to us as architects is that we create a lot of alignment of things because I think it reduces chaos or, or splitting of the eye within an environment.

Millwork to me is all wood that affixes onto the walls and the ceilings.

It's kind of that simple, right?

So drywall, affixes on the wall, and then millwork is the woodwork that comes behind.

It is true that millwork can consist of just baseboard and casing that goes around doors or windows.

Where millwork starts to get heavier and heavier is in, built-in such as built-in bookcases in ceiling applications that you're seeing here.

And you'll continue to see them throughout the home.

RICH MONTEIRO: Millwork really drives the function of the interior of the home, setting the emotion, uh, millwork really does do that.

And for every space you probably want, we're able to achieve a different emotion.

If you want to come home and kind of feel more relaxed, we can do that by softening down some of the millwork in a bedroom or in a living space.

Uh, kitchen might be, or a stair hall in a foyer might be a little bit more elaborate, and it kind of sets that excitement when you first walk into your house.

The culture here at Purple Cherry Architects is fantastic.

There really is no "I" in team here.

So we all have strengths that we, uh, we all shine in and, um, we found a way to put all those strengths together and develop, uh, the best team that we possibly could here, um, at the firm.

LAUREN NEUVEL: Having lived in the Annapolis area for over a decade, I was familiar with Purple Cherry, the brand, and, of course, driving by the iconic office building on Rowe Boulevard on the way into downtown Annapolis.

That's sort of, um, a calling card of the firm, if you will.

But it goes much beyond that.

I mean, the firm has been around for over 30 years, and beyond just being known locally, the firm is now really known nationally.

And I think what strikes people the most is, is when they get to meet our team and how our team is sort of an extension of that brand.

So our tagline is “Purpose in Architecture,” and that it was very intentional for a number of reasons.

So Cathy has a passion for working with nonprofits and working with individuals with disabilities.

And so everything that she does in that realm is purposeful.

And so I think that when clients meet our team, they really see that those sort of words in action, if you will, that our team really works as hard as they can each day to be purposeful in their actions and to be sincere in their intentions.

CATHY: For decades, I have been a consultant influencing learning and living environments of adults and children with disabilities.

And for me, when I am in that world, what's important to me is to help set the architecture, the floor plan, to where it provides the best interaction between the key players that are supporting these individuals.

So it's all about, gee, if we put something close to something else, and these two individuals can work together.

So it's all about travel, distance, and ease, and the ability to have another person see a traumatic situation to be able to come and help.

So those strategies of knowing that and reflecting through that, to me, I do that exact same thing in architecture of residential.

Probably my staff hear me speak a lot about, I need you to put yourself in the home, not two-dimensionally draw home, not think that the plan is great, but physically put yourself in it and feel yourself walking through to literally find the things that would drive you crazy, right?

Like, would it drive you crazy that a door opens across another door?

Would it drive you crazy that you have to get to the switch behind the other door?

And you really don't know those things if you can't put yourself into that environment, right?

Otherwise, then you're finding out after the house is built and you're slamming your head on the wall, going, "Oh my God, why did I do that?"

Right?

And for me, the last thing I ever want is clients to go, “Oh my gosh, the architect did that and I have no idea why.” That's like the worst thing for me.

PETER: So beginners could even start doing it that way, where they wanna test their drawing skills.

Everyone could be a really good drawer, uh, or artist with any good drawing.

The more drawings I've studied, it's always been about what you leave out.

And what's great is, you know, we use a lot of tracing paper here at the office.

So if you wanted to start just basic, what how I learned is I would trace really beautiful drawings and, you know, just putting a layer of paper on, you know, over a drawing and then be able to kind of find the lines that are important to a house and then find that balance.

And then what's great about that is then you could pull that back and say, well, I like that, or, I don't like that.

That's how I encourage young architects to do it.

So, usually I'm one of the early people into a project because I'm going to be creating the schematic designs for the clients.

So they will come to us with a program, they will come to us with inspiration images, and I would sit down and start to create the design sketches, both in plan and in elevation of what the house could look like.

So really I'm dealing with imagination at its best for, for our clients.

CATHY: It, it starts off quite easy.

It's basically what we call a kickoff meeting.

It's going onto the property with the group that's going to be working on the property, not going on it alone.

So I'm always bringing my group that will be the part of the team that will do that project.

My concerns always are for mixed signals and lost information.

Got it?

So the kickoff happens, and during the kickoff it includes a lot of questions, especially coming outta me, and a lot of diagramming in front of the clients.

KEVIN CAMPION: We start in a conceptual phase.

Uh, for, for the garden, we often call it the master plan, where we'll take a piece of land and we'll sketch lots of ideas.

We like to be involved right away.

Like if a, if a homeowner finds a piece of land they fall in love with, uh, hey, they want to build a house for their family, uh, we like to be there to, along with the architect walking the land, finding, figuring out, like where should this house sit?

You know, we look at things like the breezes, like, you know, the, the winter breeze or the summer breeze.

We track how the sun, uh, moves through the land.

Uh, we, we look at like elevation changes and views and like what you want to see and what you don't want to see.

And you put all that together with the mind of a landscape architect and the mind of an architect.

And you end up with like the perfect place for the house.

CATHY: The best way to be real-time in front of a client is to sketch the option, right?

And that sketch skill has been lost.

And so it's funny, as I teach some of my team, even if they don't have the sketch skill, the trick is that you need a loose hand.

There's a difference between having a very rigid hand because you're attempting to try to make everything perfect.

And when you draw rigidly and attempt to make it perfect, what it ends up looking like is very elementary, like almost your 6-year-old did it because it's like this wannabe straight, but it's not quite straight.

And it comes to a perfect point.

But then, and it's when you do a sketchy hand where you're going up and down and sketching back and forth, that is a much sexier hand.

So teaching people who are not comfortable with drawing that sketchy and messy is better than perfect is really the case.

PETER: I guess a good sketch hand is the ability to draw something that people can relate to.

It's not too perfect, but yet it gets the point across in an artistic way and in an emotional way, in an evocative way where they feel like they're part of the drawing and they feel like they can imagine what the rest of that building or place is going to become.

CATHY: Using trace paper on top of something to then be able to talk about, well, the kitchen could configure this way, or the kitchen could configure this way, or understand that the distances that you would need to walk.

Because the longer a house gets, the more I wanna be clear about convenience or not convenience.

Got it?

What will happen in future spaces?

I'm asking how many times you get up in the middle of the night to literally use the bathroom.

Because for me it's important to understand that as projects get bigger and bigger, we've got to be cognizant of the travel distances.

But I do like to have certain things have close proximity to other things so that it all makes sense.

When we go away from that kickoff meeting, we basically then say, “Hang tight and within the next two weeks we're gonna reach back 'cause we're gonna have a couple of floor plans for you.” So we're taking what we talked about, we're taking the sketches, diagramming, and then we're turning that messy animal into 1, 2, 3 quick options of floor plan.

PETER: When we meet with the clients in several different ways, we'll meet with them early on, then we'll meet with them, you know, a couple of weeks later, and we'll be constantly developing these drawings for them to kind of see.

But there comes a point when they have to become construction documents.

So my role will end when it starts to go into the computer, and then it starts to become a real project.

And then, like a parent watching a child, you're always watching how that project evolves and what that does and making little adjustments and tweaks to it.

MITCHELL AUGUST: My name's Mitchell August.

I'm originally from Northern Virginia.

I'm an architect here at Purple Cherry Architects.

So my job title, um, is Associate here at the firm.

You know, I'm involved in, uh, with the projects kind of from beginning to end.

I'll stand alongside with the, uh, lead designer and Cathy as they're starting the job.

And then I'll be with kind of with the job as it progresses through, uh, construction documents and then all the way through construction administration, um, as it's, you know, being built in, in the field.

I also serve as the firm's BIM manager.

So BIM is Building Information Modeling.

Um, it's kind of a category of the software that we use, which is called Revit.

Um, Revit is actually, it's, it's, I would say it's more catered towards, uh, the commercial architecture.

It does really well with large-scale buildings, and it allows for all the different consultants to, you know, structural engineers, mechanical engineers, electrical engineers, everybody to kind of work within one model.

So everybody can be looking at the same thing.

Everybody can have, you know, the same backgrounds.

They'll all be working under the same shell, but it'll allow each of them to kind of do their respective, uh, work and come together in one model.

And the benefit is that you can really see where clashes happen.

So that's, that's kind of where Revit stands out in the commercial side of things because, you know, say, you know, we've got door heads coming through and then a structural engineer has a beam coming across it, but the mechanical engineer might have a duct work, a piece of duct work that's coming through as well.

And Revit has some pieces to it that allow those clashes to kind of be highlighted, and it really helps minimize any sort of, um, errors in the field.

So that's why it works really well for commercial, but we use it here on a residential basis simply because of the, the customizability, I guess, if you will, of the, of the models that we can produce.

CATHY: Commercial architecture is anything that houses anything, let's say anything that's not residential.

And then residential architecture can cover multiple things.

It can be single-family home duplexes, multi-family, sky rises, all different kinds of housing is still residential.

And what's important to understand is what falls under what is our international codes of commercial work and life safety requirements versus what falls under our residential code requirements in the world of when we're doing commercial work, believe it or not, all of our railings must be taller, in the world of doing residential work, our railings can be shorter.

in commercial work, the biggest lift besides just doing beautiful and programming, the biggest lift is understanding fire ratings, understanding construction techniques, understanding how mechanical, complex mechanical systems are delivering through these structures.

That's commercial.

There can be a tremendous amount of creativity in commercial when the budgets are there to allow it.

And most specifically, also when you're doing work that the clients want that creativity.

So a great example of commercial with high level of creativity is hospitality and restaurant work, right?

You can go into a restaurant and be mind-blown by what's happened.

And so a lot of that stepping into that emotional interior detailing is really kind of stepping into the residential while you're doing that commercial finish work.

And I certainly also see it when you go into, say, museum or exhibit type projects where you get the opportunity to do something very clever that creates an emotion within the visitor like the Holocaust Museum, right?

Commercial, but by no means boring, just powerful in its architecture.

MITCHELL: I think informationally, it's, it's really beneficial when we're using Revit because it, it's a little tricky to think about because a lot of times, you know, when people used to use AutoCAD or just hand-draw, everything you're drawing is literally just a line.

But within Revit, what you're drawing in, you know, in 2D looks like a wall, but everything that you do has a third dimension to it, even if you're looking at it in plan, and it only looks like two dimensions.

So, um, you know, when you're drawing a wall, you're not just drawing two parallel lines, you're drawing an actual wall where the lines are there, but then it also has a height constraint to it as well.

This software is, is not only a benefit to our clients, but it's also a benefit to us too.

So as you know, as we're going through and modeling and laying in our walls and furniture and things like that, we're able to see in real time, you know, these walls come up and we're able to see and visualize the space, um, as we're designing it, which only helps us make, you know, more informed and better informed decisions as we're going through.

I was talking about kind of the dual, the dual screen setup.

So pretty much everyone in the office on the big screen will have, uh, will have Revit pulled up here.

Um, and this is where, you know, all the magic happens, if you will, right?

So this is the, the model that we're creating, this is what the construction documents are, are created from.

And like I was saying before, everything, everything in here is not only, you know, 2D lines in this view here, but you can jump out and have everything in 3D.

So the walls that we're drawing in 2D are not only, you know, living on the paper, but they also have a, a third dimension and a height to each one.

Um, you know, when we're drawing lines for the roofs, we're not, again, just drawing lines.

Each one is, is actually, you know, it's a, it's a roof that has structure to it.

So, um, you know, this is, this is a, a 3D model that the clients will have the ability to kind of walk through and really, uh, experience the space and, and really feel how each, each room is gonna feel when they get into it.

So, on the smaller screen here, but I'll drag it over so it's a little bit bigger.

This is the Enscape program that I was mentioning before, where it's a real-time rendering software.

Um, and this is a tool that we can, we can give our clients as well after a, after a meeting, per se, and we, and we can just, you know, let them view it over the weekend so they can walk through.

But this, you know, it's, it's set at, at the height of a, of the human scale and you can, um, you can fly around the building, um, fly into the building and again, it, you know, it takes the, the kind of the raw construction documents that, that we're producing that the contractor wants, um, you know, with the, the dimensions and the, um, construction tags and call outs and things like that.

But it also gives, um, you know, the clients a, a real-time visualization of what the interior space is gonna look like.

CATHY: It's all about, to me, understanding people, and it's all about being able to communicate with people, and it's all about being able to learn more and more about life because you don't know everything, right?

So to be able to learn from others' things that influence life and then translate that into a better built environment is really the goal, to me, of an excellent architect.

♪ ♪ WENDELL: "Artworks" is made possible in part by the Citizens of Baltimore County and by the Ruth R. Marder Arts Endowment Fund, The Robert E. Meyerhoff and Rheda Becker Endowment for the Arts, The E.T.

and Robert B. Rocklin Fund, The Henry and Ruth Blaustein Rosenberg Foundation Arts Endowment in memory of Ruth Marder.

♪ ♪ ANNOUNCER: Second Story Books, celebrating 50 years of dedicated book selling.